After
by Memphis Lupine
Summary: [Mild LysergxRyu] Jeanne and Lyserg talk.


Continuity: Immediately following a conjectured end of the Shaman Fight, vaguely. This advances somewhat on a few ideas presented in 'Unknown.'  
  
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After  
  
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A term existed for what he felt though he found himself hard-pressed to remember it. Plying the decorative salad on his plate with a fork was doing little to help jog his mind, and he frowned, slightly, with thought. The lettuce made generous crackling sounds, the fork tossing leaves over in pointless circles, and his face tilted down to watch it. Why had he come here?  
  
"Is something bothering you, Lyserg?" she asked from the other end of the table, her own fork poised elegantly in her hand. He looked up sharply, startled, and immediately flushed at the questioning expression she wore, a bit embarrassed. "I can't think what it might be," she continued, in a voice that seemed older than she, "though perhaps I can guess." Her hand tightened, imperceptibly. "Is it Hao?"  
  
A neutral question deserving of an answer far from neutral; Marco's lips thinned and Lyserg drew to the side instinctively, only a fractional movement. The chamber was filled with an unusual, omnipresent silence, bearing down on them with an awkward something: resentment, frustration, and, perhaps, guilt.  
  
No, thought Lyserg as he stared at the fork's glinting points; not those, but he latched onto the presented idea, knowing he was - as they all were - upset that Hao, though not victorious either, had continued to live. It was not justice that he breathe when Meene and his parents could not, that he should be left to live when he had nearly killed those who had been kind to the boy.  
  
"Yes," he finally said quietly, "it must be Hao." He imagined the lettuce was Hao's disturbingly easy smile, stabbed at it with his fork, and found little satisfaction therein. He grappled with the swarming hatred inside, and added, "It isn't fair. He can't be allowed to live, Maiden. How can he?" He avoided looking at Marco, sensing the man's cold outrage at his questioning. "I'm not comfortable with it," he finished softly.  
  
His parents killed for daring deny him, those few X-Laws who had truly befriended him, and in a brief flash of frustrated remembrance, Ryu facing Hao's followers alone. Helpless countless times, watching those he cared for taken away, and when Lyserg stabbed the lettuce again, he felt a great deal more savage satisfaction.   
  
"I see," she said noncommitally in the quiet. Amidst the clink of cutlery on porcelain and china, she folded her napkin properly and slipped it beside her plate. "Marco," the Maiden began regally, keeping her eyes fixed on Lyserg, "if you would be so kind as to escort the others out? I wish to speak with Lyserg alone." She turned her head to smile sweetly at the lanky man.  
  
Green hair shifting over his eyes, the boy stiffened his shoulders, sensing the irrational anger smoldering just under the surface; he could easily prophesy a beating in the near future, for no reason other than suspected favoritism and a means of exacting his fury out.  
  
"Of course, Maiden," Marco replied respectfully, though his gloved hand fisted dangerously. Lyserg shifted back in his seat, uneasy. "I will do so." And with a sharp look at the others, each of whom shared brief looks before standing, he shifted to his feet. "Should we wait beside the door?"  
  
"No need," she dismissed. "I will send Lyserg for you," she smiled across at the boy, "when we are doing talking. If you will...?"  
  
A sound of consent and with a dark glower sent to Lyserg, Marco led the others out with a sharp walk, and then an absolute silence fell upon the wide room.  
  
"You've come to talk with me," spoke the Maiden decisively, sweeping from her chair and holding her hands together at her lap. "Haven't you?" She smiled, stepping across the floor as the ruffles on her skirt whispered. "I'm not surprised; there are many things to talk about now. Their letting Hao live," her eyes darkened slightly, "is merely one."  
  
Gently, she pulled a chair out and slid into it; looking at her, he was acutely reminded by the light that seemed to rest under her skin, that if Hao was a dark god, she was a pale goddess, decadence and renewal. She gave him a soft smile, one that was painfully like one his mother had used to soothe him on restless nights.  
  
Lyserg was briefly ashamed to feel a surge of wetness touching his eyes. "Yes, Maiden," he said, voice muffled as he passed his hand over his eyes quickly. He kept his hand over his eyes for a moment, and soon lowered it. "Yes," he continued lowly, "I think I want to talk."  
  
She smiled gently again, radiating years she did not have. "Do you know what you want to discuss?" Carefully, she started slowly folding a napkin discarded near her. "I don't wish to pry, though, so only speak on what you want to." The napkin folded, she set it back on the table, smoothing her palm over it serenely.  
  
He watched the movement of her hand, detached, and then glanced at his own small hands, the hatefully effeminate curves and slender fingers. Only the faintest masculinity existed in the squareness where his palm fled to wrist, his hands and hers eerily alike. Strangely, seeing the girlish quality of his fingers was suddenly not quite as painful as usual: his delicate features had long been a source of ridicule and thus receiver of his own hatred..   
  
Not that Ryu had ever ridiculed him for it, he smiled shortly; the thought was usually accompanied by a mixture of chagrin, guilty amusement, and something else he was not comfortable with, but came now with a wordless query. The sensation of wondering - he still could not find the term or word to label his discontent - seemed to intensify only slightly.  
  
The Maiden was studying his face critically, her eyes gentle though fleeting ghosts of iron sheeted them. "Lyserg Diethyl," she said sternly, and he blinked at her. She smiled quirkily for a second. "I understand if you can't find an easy place to start, but I need time to recoup and think; the evening won't last forever."   
  
Latching his hands together, resting them on the thin length of table between plate and edge, he studied his oval fingernails; he knew she meant she was once again going to torture herself. "Why do you punish yourself?" he asked honestly.  
  
She smiled again. "Why do *you* punish yourself?" she answered. "I don't find you to be violent by nature, but I know as well as you do that if Hao was before us, defenseless, you would strike at him as soon as I." Her smile darkened briefly, shrinking in on itself before she wiped it clear, staring blankly at him. "I punish myself for righteousness and power. Why, then, do you?"  
  
"Father and Mother," he said instinctively, and glanced at her with a pleading look. "I don't--"  
  
"Want to talk about it?" she asked politely. He had seen fire in Hao's eyes and shadow's in Yoh's, but steel could flash in her eyes, a hardness that was almost unnatural. "Yes," said the Maiden in cool continuation, "you do wish to talk about it."  
  
Again he watched his fingernails. "He takes the people I care about," Lyserg spoke quietly. "My parents, friends, people I looked up to." He remembered the frustrated desire to fight, and his feminine hands pulled tight, nails biting into his palms. A constancy of blood: his mother and father, Meene, and Ryu.  
  
He had wanted to stay with Ryu, that one nightmarish time, to protect and fight; it was somehow desperately wrong, when he thought about it: the tall man facing darkness on his own as they fled, taking his offer of protection. Weakness, as Lyserg had known he was too powerless on his own to help, and was that not how Hao drew his greatest advantages? That those he and his followers fought were filled with hollow knowledge of weak power?  
  
The Maiden smiled and nodded, her eyes closing for a moment; again he was reminded of his mother.  
  
"Ah," the Maiden conceded. Her eyes were painfully aged in the young glint of her face, as though she knew all quickly with shadows of iron and steel. "The greatest motivator, or one of them, is loss." Her voice had softened, pitching itself higher in accordance with her youth, and she nodded, slightly. "But what else have you lost?"  
  
She looked sharply at him. "Innocence, perhaps?"  
  
He shifted uncomfortably, turning a little red, and managed a marginally squeaky "no" before she began giggling. "Um," he continued, blushing even harder, "that is to say..."  
  
"I didn't mean it like that," she giggled, cupping fingertips over her mouth. Straightening her features and back with royal precision, she allowed her lips one betraying twitch at the corners. "What I meant, of course," she started newly, with a faint smile remaining, "was that you have been changed." The Maiden watched him steadily.  
  
"Yes," he admitted softly, and thought of weakness as he watched Ryu receding in the distance, and then vanishing from sight.  
  
She nodded as her eyes flooded with steel for but a moment.  
  
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Notes: Most likely written to get a better handle on the characters of Jeanne and Lyserg (I'll extend this, I'm sure); additionally, I wanted to tweak Lyserg's perception of Ryu a bit. Hopefully, if Shadow Seeker and Chibi Team Rocket (who rock, as all should know) are reading this, rest assured I'm working on my Ryu/Lyserg fic - I need to rework Ryu's character a bit. And to any who might guess so, no, this was not Jeanne/Lyserg (or vice versa). :]  
  
Feedback: *singing off-key* Reeeee-views!  
  
Disclaimer: There's no need to rub it in. 


End file.
